Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Sneak Peek: ESPN Defensive Ratings

Many people have commented with glee about ESPN’s latest masterpiece, ESPN Player Ratings. These ratings take everything that’s important about a player and boils it down into a number than can be used to evaluate that the player’s worth to a team, the most important thing in baseball.

Using my Top Secret Insider Connections, I broke into ESPN’s headquarters and procured the secret upcoming formula from the two-key secure mainframe inside Bristol’s reactor core. Enjoy! But if you don’t hear from me again, it means that E-men got to me.

UPDATE: I’m in even hotter water as I have obtained the exclusive spreadsheet and am posting it here. I’m in hiding right now, but I feel the walls closing around me. Please, tell people. Tell people.

FPCT - Fielding Percentage (19%) - By far the most important measure of fielding, fielding percentage has proven itself for more than a century as the gold standard by which excellence is judged. Until now.

+/- 35 - How many years from Age 35 (16%) - Stats cannot measure a player’s leadership, which comes from experience. But this is the next best thing.

Ht>60 - Height over 60 inches (10%) - It’s well known that taller players have more trouble playing defense because their gangly limbs can get in the way, unlike short, compact sparkplugs. This is only weighted 12% because it would be unfair to be too hard on elite defenders like Derek Jeter who overcome their height.

Skin - Skin tone (1-10) (14%) - Everybody knows that white players have to work harder because they don’t have as much natural talent. Hard work should always be honored.

Elc. V - Electoral Votes of Home State (7%) - When you think of defensive prowess, what do you think of? California and Florida boys who work in the sun, good ol’ Texas lads who farm during the day and play baseball at night, and scrappy New Yorkers, full of piss and vinegar. All those states have a lot of electoral votes. Nuff said.

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A quibble though, You have Harris listed as a 9 for skin, higher than other 'white' shortstops like Crosby and Young. They have to play under the sun, while Harris plays in a dome. Shouldn't you consider a park factor here?

Also, Elc. V is totally bogus. When I think of defensive prowess, I think of Venezuela. Perhaps a column relating to oil production would be more appropriate. It would conveniently include your Texans, although it might overrate Rusty Staub (not to mention Curt Schilling) just a bit.

I don't think there is enough emphasis on "grit", and I'm not sure "Skin tone" effectively captures it. Are you factoring in determination? Off-field obstacles overcome? Managerial fondness for said player? Ability to keep a MLB job despite the absence of talent? Instances of announcers calling him a "gamer"?

So it could use some tweaking, but this is obviously the gold standard that all fielding discussions should utilize. Well done Dan.

I appreciate the kudos, but the work was done by Andy Einsteinium and I'm in enough trouble with ESPN for infilitrating their secret lair. I hope to eventually mend fences enough to get an interview with Andy, so he can tell us about his tremendous journey from crack addict sleeping in ESPN's janitorial closet to the number 1 cognitive biologer for the big E.

A quibble though, You have Harris listed as a 9 for skin, higher than other 'white' shortstops like Crosby and Young. They have to play under the sun, while Harris plays in a dome. Shouldn't you consider a park factor here?

I can't speak from Andy, but Jeff Bennett discussed this at length. Essentially, as Bennett's theory goes, park factors are overrated - clearly, Carl Crawford can still be black in a dome and Khalil Greene can still be surprisingly white in sunny San Diego, so it's unfair to penalize Brendan Harris or to reward Miguel Tejada.

I agree with the Venezuelan factor though so perhaps a ranking of oil production and consumption -- that way you get to keep Venezuela, Texas, California, and NY.

I think there may need to be some position-specific factors included. I don't know how you measure SS defense if you don't include salary/HR. Used to be only the Yankees were aware of this factor -- it's why they moved AROD to 3B.

The key point is that this stat is useless until it can show to everybody that Jeter is #1.

Where are the waves of pop-ups? Where are the floating Flash widgets to get in my way of reading the content? Where are the noises, flashing lights, and other baubles? Where are the obstrusive , jump-to-the-front ads to interfere with drop-down menus?

...and above all -- why haven't we heard from Sean yet that BB-Ref will be updated to actually make this statistic accessible and at least entertaining?

Don't feel bad. Everybody goes through The Khalil Effect at some point in their lives. Whether it's a kindergarten teacher looking at the attendance list or a baseball fan seeing Greene for the first time, everyone goes through the shock that the man named "Khalil Thabit Greene" isn't just not a minority, but a very white man, sometimes with flowing blond locks like a Norse god.

Don't feel bad. Everybody goes through The Khalil Effect at some point in their lives. Whether it's a kindergarten teacher looking at the attendance list or a baseball fan seeing Greene for the first time, everyone goes through the shock that the man named "Khalil Thabit Greene" isn't just not a minority, but a very white man, sometimes with flowing blond locks like a Norse god.

I actually usually have quite a full head of hair, I've just been shaving it since September. I haven't been able to keep it up - my skin is too sensitive and my scalp still wants the temperature to be 20 degrees warmer than the rest of my body.

there is absolutely no way in hell that this list/formula is accurate. please, anything that has young and jeter ahead of renteria, reyes and furcal is absurd. i mean really, jeter's range was bad enough for most of his career, but it is plain embarrassing now. does anyone bother to see how many hits up the middle there are against the yankees? and i don't mean screamers back up the box, i mean soft choppers up the middle on the ss side by 6-10 feet that jeter doesn't even get close too. gimme a break.